my phone call

Today, while Dad appeared to be distracted by his computer, I gave Dair a call. Turns out Dad wasn't as oblivious as he appeared; he asked me who I was calling. When I told him, he asked who Dair was, and I euphemistically described her as "a girl doggy." The rube took me literally; he asked me what color the doggy was, so I told him she was yellow.

m.

more futility

Today I taught myself the game of Crazy Eights, a pleasant diversion, with a deck of cards left about by my loutish drunkard of a father after one of his bacchanals and a set of directions printed in a bright soft green font on a piece of dark white cardboard in a book entitled "Gambling For Toddlers." It's meant to be at least a two-player contest; my quest for a second player is yet another manifestation of the difficulties and travails of my horrible, wonderful life. I spent hours trying to impart some of my cardsharp talents to Claire, my idiot sister; but failed utterly to divert her attention from drooling and smelling herself to attend to even holding her cards. She lost every game we played. If this is the sum of all her knowledge and wisdom after over three months of life (has it been three months already? She was born in mid October, and it's now early January, so... yes, three months, right? I'm not sure if I have a complete comprehension of this "counting" thing altogether), I do not hold great hopes that she would be a worthy challenger in any World Series of Poker any time soon. I'm put in mind of the sad king in Ecclesiastes: "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity...."
I have to nap now.

jr

another foray in the search to create a meaning

Life is futile scrambling, as witness my position today: writing this post without a thesis sentence or discernable topic, watching bad television from the 80's (which may be redundant), at some ungodly hour of the morning, sitting on a foul-smelling Fluxus-contraption impersonating a chair, trying to detail a stream of consciousness without devoting much consciousness to the streaming. Such futility! In my two years of living, I have observed that each successive day is far more terrible than the preceding one; one wonders why any self-respecting toddler would attempt the enormous energies required to teach oneself to type, since an oppressive air of "Why Bother?" seems to rule the atmosphere like a kind of self-promoting pollution. Why bother? Why pick up a crayon, since despite the initial riot and variety of colour crayons inevitably render up a sad democracy, the melancholy of chosisme.... oh, the emperor Marcus Aurelius assuredly said it most pithily, in his Meditations. I'd quote it here, except that I'm not sure if I've completely mastered this whole "reading" thing.
More anon, perhaps tomorrow.

jr